dtp - Insolvent!

April 28th, 2012, 20:37

Thanks to zyklop for letting us know that the German publisher dtp is insolvent. A local lawyer has been appointed as temporary insolvency administrator. Further details aren't known yet. We'll keep you updated.dtp published or distributed many Euro RPGs in the German speaking countries. They were involved in the first Gothic. Later followed the Drakensang series, Divinity 2, Venetica, Dungeon Lords and the King's Bounty series. New games include Blood Knights by Deck 13, Confrontation and A Game of Thrones, both by Cyanide & Focus Home.
All the best to our long time friends in Hamburg. We hope the company will recover from the insolvency and as many employees as possible can keep their jobs.More information.

That's what you get for retarded region locking and other "let us decide what's good for the customer because the customer knows not what's good for themselves" bullshit. Good riddance, dtp. You won't be missed (by me at least). I hope someone more competent picks up the pieces and that the employees all find a new job real soon. Good luck to them!

And Drakensang was lost to us a while ago. Raedon Labs where bought by Bigpoint (which produces Online&Browser games) and Bigpoint is working on Drakensang Online - but without the rights to TDE, so it will be just generic fantasy. Drakensang is very dead.

I´ve known some of the guys from dtp for more than 8 years now. For me it´s always sad when a game publisher fails. And especially in Germany there are only a fistfull left, who are able to handle triple-a products.

One from the earlier community management team (I think it way dtp Olli) now works for EA (last task I heard of was press work for ME3 in Germany) , the other one (dtp Betty) has gone to somewhere else (does anyone here by chance know where she has gone to ?).

I especially liked their Divinity 2 quiz on the RPC : Several glass/wood display cabinets containing *huge* eggs (Dragon Eggs ? )- and a sheet attached to the cabinet. All sheets combined contained letters (?) to the solution of the quiz.

This also explains why they are not on the RPC … They have always been there, all of the recent years …

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Seems to be tough to make a living, as a game publisher, these days. We like to bash publishers a lot, but one should probably keep in mind that they, too operate under considerable pressure. Good luck to all dtp employees.

Tolknaz

April 28th, 2012, 23:46

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, this means that we may lose a publisher behind some great or at least unique games. But their work publishing these games was absolutely shit. They drove Drakensang to the ground FFS and thet series had huge potential as evidenced by TROT. With better marketing and more exposition this game would also have been financially successful in addition to being a true modern classic of the RPG genre.

dtp only distributed King's Bounty in Germany. The overall license holder seems to be 1C.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Seems to be tough to make a living, as a game publisher, these days. We like to bash publishers a lot, but one should probably keep in mind that they, too operate under considerable pressure. Good luck to all dtp employees.

Yes, smaller publishers seem to still have a much harder time than the colossus of let's say ActiBlizzard or Ubi or EA or so do have.

Originally Posted by tolknaz
They drove Drakensang to the ground FFS and thet series had huge potential as evidenced by TROT. With better marketing and more exposition this game would also have been financially successful in addition to being a true modern classic of the RPG genre.

Yes, but please keep in mind that the publisher responsible for the U.S. also didn't value the game. Although it had the name of ValuSoft (daughter of THQ), if I understood it correctly.

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Yes, but please keep in mind that the publisher responsible for the U.S. also didn't value the game. Although it had the name of ValuSoft (daughter of THQ), if I understood it correctly.

It was Valusoft, though you may be being unfair to them as I'm fairly sure they picked up TROT late, and after just about everyone else passed on it- and they did at least get a DD release on the books which was (and I really cannot think of a good reason why given the conversion was already done) better than dtp managed. Only available in NA or if you know how to use a proxy/VPN, but certainly better than nothing which is what it seems dtp was offering.

Well, with luck GoG will somehow get TROT and such wrangled up there one of these days alongside the classic trilogy.

The Dark Eye needs an orderly OGL equivalent so fans and whatnot can at least take a crack at making use of the fine rulesets for lower budget endeavors and whatnot——nobody can tell me the rich setting wouldn't be a great fit for a sprawling 2D (Graphical) Roguelike or just something that plays to the strengths it has versus hoping for a trump outright on A/V and such in terms of TROT.

Then again, even before that, I don't quite think the entirety of the source books and such have even been made available in English up to the present incarnation?

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Yes, but please keep in mind that the publisher responsible for the U.S. also didn't value the game. Although it had the name of ValuSoft (daughter of THQ), if I understood it correctly.

The NA release was almost exactly one year after the German one. Most other territories were never released. I had to use proxy shenanigans to buy the game. It's pretty obvious dtp were either incompetent or didn't value the game at all, regardless of what ValuSoft did.

Originally Posted by Scrav
I was never able to get hold of the Drakensang games - I guess I never will now.

You need publishing partners in different countries to get a game into the shelves of the retail dealers. They know the center managers and other key-people of the business. In other case you have to put all of your chips in the online distribution. dtp did neither of this, so they failed to spread their products all over the EU, Asien and US market in time. The costs for localizing would have been wise invested…

And yes, Olli works for EA now, he´s responsible for rpg´s like ME and DA. I also remember his predecessor Chris Keller, it was the time of Dungeon Lords, that was also published by dtp in Germany. Anyone remember this?
David tries to revive it via Kickstarter in the moment. The first version was a curious thing, since this release i didn´t remember a game, that lacks whole parts of the content from the start! Empty buildings, the elfen region abandened and other bad, bad missings…

I don't know what to think. On the people's side of the story, it's a desaster and incredibly sad. On the business side, I am not that surprised. dtp was a traditional german company and imho that's the reason why it failed. As did all typical german companies before them, who tried to get international. I don't know why it does not work, but so it is.

Well, Insolvencydoesn't necessarily mean "out of business". Usually yes, but if they manage to find a new investor, they could stay afloat.

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)